COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET

I want to say something to gays and lesbians worldwide. You don't own the closet and you never did. Before homosexuals every laid claim to the smallest room in the house (and then decided to break out), typical white-bread eating guys like me were hiding all sorts of sins under rack and hanger. Sure, ours were less glamourous transgressions, like secretly kissing magazine pictures of Cheryl Tiegs, but we have had things to hide too.

Closets don't get much good press. Steven Wright shares that his grandfather made him stand in the closet; telling him it was "elevator practice." A famous philosopher noting the probability of keeping one's innocence, once said it was like, "looking in a dark closet for a black cat that isn't there." Thus I can see why no one would want to stay in a closet. Creepy, dark, forbidding and stifling, no wonder this is where we put that side of ourselves we don't like.

Today if someone wants to describe an unpleasant side of them self they will use the prefix "closet." For instance, people all the time say, "I am a..." closet-control freak, closet-clean freak, closet-chocoholic, closet-Barry Manilow fan, et. al. I know alot of women who are into big walk-in wardrobes for their clothes, but won't admit it. They, of course are closet-closet freaks.

Even as families we have always spoken in hushed tones concerning the "skeletons in our closets." Usually it would be a great, great uncle who was hung for deserting during some war. Or, a family trying to hide their son's career regression from Pro Wrestler to Governor. The secrets that families keep started the whole concept of "in the closet."

The story goes that right after the revolutionary war, a farmer and his wife and their 4 adopted Jamaican children were visited by a traveling vacuum salesman. He was so good, he not only sold them a vacuum but he got them to purchase a Ronco Pocket Fisherman and a set of steak knives. As he was leaving the couple realized that electricity hadn't even been invented yet, so they snagged him with the pocket rod & reel, pulled him back into the house and stabbed him with the steak knives. Realizing their situation and needing to hide the evidence they built the first closet. After hiding the vacuum cleaner there, they figured putting his body in would work too... eventually turning into the first "skeleton in the closet." This is stupid you say? Well, I am a closet-pathological liar.

Some days I wish I had something really exciting to "come out" with, but I just don't. My bigger secrets are that I keep a box of Poptarts in my car at all times, or soak my nails in Palmolive. Once in Santa Monica, California after being stopped for speeding, I threw an L.A. cop to the ground and took his gun and squad car. Police helicopters chased me all through the city only to nab me when out of habit, I stopped to see a movie. But this is nothing to come out of the closet with, since it was on "Fox's Scariest Police Chases, Part IV." Yep, I'm still a closet-pathological liar. Oops, I just "came out."

Billy Murphy - HimOnWry@aol.com - 11/6/98